Pictures of Florence and Venice

 The view of Florence

 All the canals in Venice looked like this...this is a shot off a little foot bridge

 Sitting on our balcony overlooking the Grand Canal...we were directly on it.   It was an incredible view and we spent a good amount of time on our little balcony!

 The three ways of getting around in Venice...a gondola in the front, a water taxi in the middle, and a waterbus in the background.  There were no motor vehicles at all, even for the police.  Not even any bicycles!  Only boats and foot traffic.

 This is the picture that was in our room...Dad was quite taken with the expression on her face, and nicknamed her  "Betty".  We thought perhaps she was plotting an untimely end for an unbearable husband...

On a water-bus in Venice!

Sewing the button back onto my coat.  It had been missing for several days before I got around to sewing it back on...pricking my finger many many times in the process.  I do not seem to have inherited the sewing ability of my mother and grandmothers.



The liiiitle tiny soda cans on the Lufthansa flight to Paris...they were just too cute for me not to document them.  Also, they didn't have ginger ale...they had "lemon bitters" instead.  It tasted just like it sounds...once again, silly Europeans.  Don't they know how good Vernor's ginger ale is?!

The view of the Alps out of our window on the plane- we flew directly over them to reach Paris.  We were at about 30,000 feet, a normal flying altitude, and they reached to almost 25,000 feet.  We were fairly close to them! An incredible view.

In Paris

I'm here! At long last, I am in Paris, ready to spend the next four months here. Dad and I are staying at the hotel where my orientation with API (the program that set up my study abroad) is to be.  He will be heading  back to the states tomorrow, and I will be sticking around for a two-day orientation here.  I will then move into my host family's apartement, and classes will begin Feb. 11. 
We landed at Charles de Gaulle, the Paris airport, around 2 pm.  We somehow managed to make it to the attached train station, and catch a direct train to a downtown Paris station, where we connected to the metro line that would take us close to our destination. I am sure we stuck out like sore thumbs with all of our luggage and our loud English, but we made it! 
It is so. cold. here.  Below freezing... the coldest we have encountered thus far. We walked a little, to find somewhere to eat dinner, but ended up eating in shifts. We began with a split piece of pizza, then moved on to a little bar for what we thought was happy hour.  We thought we ordered off teh happy hour menu, but when we go the check realized we were mistaken...but it was good anyway! We then moved on to a small cafe to finish with soup and drinks, and then returned to our hotel with some groceries for my breakfast for thenext few days. 
When we were at the grocery store, I saw my very first European penny. It is tiny! The penny here is even smaller than the American dime.   I could not stop exclaiming over how small it was, and I just know the shopkeepers were laughing when we left. 
Am about to head to bed-not looking forward to Dad leaving in the morning.  He will be very much missed-there have been some tears on my part already.  I am trying not to think much more than a day at a time ahead- any more than that and I am overwhelmed with nerves and start questioning why I decided to do this in the first place!  I know I will be fine here, it is just the unknown that gets to me.  Keep me in your thoughts as I meet my program fellows and leaders, adn my host family!

I LOVE VENICE

Yes. So far my favorite.  Then again, I have only been here for roughly 8 hours.  But I love everything I have thus far come in contact with...the waterbusses, the canals, the bridges, the lack of cars, the seafood, the prosecco (thanks Rio!)...the list keeps on going. 
Today we drove from Sasso Marconi (where we stopped last night when it dropped to almost freezing and began to snow) to Venice, and got here around 2 pm.  We parked outside the city, and took a "people mover" aka a train into the city, then a waterbus to the stop right by our hotel.  When we arrived, we found that the reservation we thought we had made through Expedia had never gone through, so the hotel thought we were just crazy Americans making things up :) They were extremely helpful, however, and served us delicious cappucino and let us use their internet and phone until we got everything sorted out. Thankfully, we were never charged, and the hotel had an opening for us, so we got to stay anyway.  I was very glad, as it is a beautiful hotel right on the Grand Canal, and therefore very easy to find amid the teensy tiny streets of Venice.  I thought the streets in Rome were small...these are barely alleys.  And honestly, that is part of what I love about them!  I have never been anywhere like this before, and I am eating it up. 
We spent the afternoon walking around, getting a little lost, and enjoying Venice.  We had a wonderful progressive dinner, as we began at one restaurant recommended to us where we couldn't understand a  thing on the menu except prosecco, birra, and zuppa (champagne, beer, and soup).  We had all three, then moved about three yards down the street for the rest of our meal of a calzone for Dad and a seafood pasta for me.  I have thouroughly enjoyed every single thing that went into my mouth thus far in Italy, save one gnocchi dish I had in Rome.  I think that is a pretty good record.
My internet is about to run out for the evening, so I will leave you with that.

These took about an hour and a half to upload, so this is all you get for now.

 My first euros!

 I love the little Fiats...

 Lots of cappucino, wine, and espresso

 Eating our first meal outside...where we met the German couple and the GCC guy

 Every hotel bathroom has a toilet, and a little wash thingy to the side...at least that's what I think it is.  Silly Europeans.

 At the Coliseum

 Our tiny Ford-any bigger and we wouldn't be able to fit on the little Italian roads!

St. Peter's Basilica-hanging onto the grating for dear life.  Heights and I are not friends.

buena sera! molto buene, grazie!

That is the only Italian I can say with any kind of confidence. I just spent the past three and a half days in Rome with my dad, and was amazed at how little you actually need to know-everyone, including our waiters and the street vendors, immediately switched to English as soon as we opened our mouths. It's been wonderful, but now that we've left Rome and are on our way up the Mediterranian coast, I'm afraid we might not be able to communicate so easily. We have a phrase book, and I spent part of our drive trying to teach myself pertinent phrases, such as "Do you have any vacancies? How much for one nights' stay?" and the very important, "Danger! Do not enter!"
But I am getting a little ahead of myself...I just spent three days in Rome! It is incredible just how ooooold the city is. Everything is old. The cobblestone streets, the fountains you run into around every corner, the buildings where there are hundreds of pizzerias and restaurants and stores-instead of tearing things down and builing a new store to fit their needs, people have instead adopted their needs to fit the thousand-year old buildings. It's pretty cool to be walking down a tiny alley surrounded by these gorgeous buildings, and see how the tiny front rooms are the stores and apartments are above. And then the next moment, to have to slam yourself flat against the stone wall as one of the city's tiny Smartcars or motorcycles roars (well, not really roars. Smartcars can't really roar...buzzes?) toward you at breakneck speed with ZERO regard for the fact that you are there. One thingI would not be able to do in Rome is keep up with the crazy traffic and tiny winding streets. Seriously, an alley you would not expect to fit three people walking abreast can fit an entire taxi, and does.
The hotel we were staying in (Hotel Nazzione) was literally a thirty-second walk from the Trevi Fountain, and was surrounded by little alleys filled with street artists, delicious pizzerias, and cafés. We spent a lot of time the day we arrived just wandering around Rome, getting aquainted with the city a little and fighting the desperate urge to curl up in a ball and fall asleep right on the street. Jet lag is no joke. However, despite our weariness, we had agreat first day, seeing the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and The Ministry of Culture by complete accident. We found a delicious pizzeria, also accidentally, and had our first real Italian pizzas. We were in bed by 8, and slept til 11 the next morning without waking up once.
The next day, we headed to the Coliseum, passing several impressive archaeological sites displaying ruins from ancient Rome on the way. A little time was spent walking the outside of the Coliseum, but we put off the tour of the inside, as we wanted to go see the Catacombs de San Callisto on the Appian Way. They aren't within walking distance like everything else in Rome is, so we found a tour bus that would take us. It was raining a little, and it was pretty chilly, so we thought that underground catacombs were a pretty good idea. Little did we know that the bus we got tickets for was entirely open, with only one row of seats under any kind of roof. Luckily, we got that row (really, we had practialcally the entire bus to ourselves, as everyone else in Rome knew not to ride the only entirely open bus in the middle of JAnuary) and it was not an unpleasant ride. WE took a tour of the catacombs with an Indian guide who spoke fairly understandable English, and it was very interesting to hear the history of how the Chrisitans started using catacombs to protect their dead from the Romans Empire, and just kept going deeper and deeper down as the years wore on. I forget teh exact number buried there, but it was something like 500 thousand in just that one catacomb. There are about 60 different catacombs around Rome, witht the one we visited being the largest. there had been a variety of priests, saints, and martyrs buried there as well, but after the Goths had broken open every single tomb int he whole catacomb looking for treasure, thier bodies were moved to the Vatican for reburial.
That night, we decided to go out for a real Italian meal, so we went to one of the numerous restaruants around our hotel and ate outside. It was probably about 40 degrees, but they had these massive heaters that put out enough heat to make us just as comfortable as if we were outside. We ended up talking to the German couple sitting beside us, as well as the two guys to our right-one of them had graduated from Grove City college three years previously, and had been working in Paris for the past 3 years, so I had a few questions for him :)
The following morning, we got up at a much more reasonable hour and headed back to the Coliseum for a tour of the inside. Dad looooved this part-very historical, and therefore right up his alley. It was cool for me too, standing in a structure that has been around since Biblical times is pretty humbling. We took a guided tour, and learned some o fthe details about how it was used and why it is in its' current condition. The Romans, after it had fallen out of use, had actually takenall of the marble and a lot of the metal from the Coliseum to make weapons and the Vatican, and so that is part of the reason it is in ruin. Obviously, it's super old, so that had a little to do with it as well...
AFter our tour, and alittle wandering around inside on our own, we walked across the city to the VAtican. It was getting later in the afternoon, and so we only had enough time to go through Saint Peter's. We started at the top, climbing hundreds of stairs to get to the balisica and see the cieling up close. I took some pictures, both from the basilica looking down, and the n from the gound looking up, and will go back and post them when I get a chance to download them all. Dad walked up even further to the cupola at ethe top of the basilica, and got to look out over the whole city of Rome. I started up, but as the stairs got steeper my knees got weaker, and I quickly turned around oand opted out. Heights just aren't my thing, my knees always betray me right before my stomach drops into my toes :)
It was too late that tday to see the musems and the Sistene Chapel, so we walked alllllt he way back across the city for dnner. Byt his poitn, our feet were bruised and tired from three days of cobblestones and a lot more walking than either of us was used to, so it felt great to just sit for a little whiel before going out for our dinner. WE walked over to the Spanish steps, and caught the tail end of a French mass being given inside the church at the top. All teh churches we had wandered into in the past few days had been incredibly ornate and beautiful, and this one was no exception. It was a beautiful experience to hear the choir echoing throughout the silent cathedral and to et to look around at the incredible artwork on the cieling, the walls, the floor, the doors, the alter...you get the drift. Not an inch went undecorated, a theme I have noticed in most of the buildings in Rome
This morning, we got up and checked out of our hotel, then headed back to the Vatican to pick up our rental car nearby and to see the Sistene Chapel. We left our bags in our rental, and walked what felt like ten miles to the entrance of the Museo Vaticani. Once inside, I aws once again blown away by the splendor. There must have been ten thousand peices of sculpture, not to mentino the incredible murals on the walls and ceiling and the marblework on the floors. The museum just never ended, it justkept opening into another room of artwork, tapestries, sculptures...and then we finished in the Sistene Chapel. The painted wall hangings and painted columns looked so real I had to go right up to them to see the were indeed 2d paintings, not real cloth and marble. the whole thing was so vibrant it almost looked 3d
WE stopped for the best pasta we've had yet on our way back to our car-capellini with tomato and basil sauce. The simplest thing on the menu, but unbelieveably good.
Our drive out of town was a little nerve-wracking, with DAd at teh wheel braving the crazy Roman drivers and me manning the map-not my strenth. However, we made it, and had a nice little 2 hour drive out of the city along the Mediterrainian. (sp?) wetried to stop in a littl etown right on the coast, but quickly found that it must be strictly a summer residential area, and so returned to the main road to escape the VERY windy VERY narrow lanes. WE stopped and asked a gas station attendant for the nearest hotel, and somehow managed to make out a name of a hotel down the road amid his rapid and unintelligible (to us at least) Italian.
So here I am, typing on their computer about the past four days, and I cannot believe how much I have already seen . We're going to stick our toes in the Mediterranian tomorrow, no matter howcold it is.
I'll do my best to post again soon, but I simply cannot type anymore now. My fingers are numb, hence the increase in typos as this got longer.
Until next time|!

I am royalty.

No, seriously.  I am currently sitting in the lounge in a castle...our hotel is inside the walls of San Gimignano, a really really old (again with the old, I just cannot get over how old everything in Italy is.  Comes from living in baby America my whole life) castle in the middle of the Tuscany area.  It is gorgeous.  If it looks like this in the middle of January, I can't imagine how it looks in June!  We have been driving through the Italian countryside on our way to Florence, and even though it is probably only a 3 or 4 hour drive from Rome to Florence, we've managed to make it last from 4 pm yesterday til about 9am tomorrow :) It is just beautiful, and we are taking our time and enjoying the scenery.  We began our day by putting our hands in the Mediterranian (AH! first time ever!) in Orbetello, and then continued on our way through Siena up toward Florence.  On the way, we got hungry and stopped right past Siena to grab a quick bite.

On a side note, a quick bite in Italy does not translate into fast food.  A quick bite means walking into a little cafe, sitting at a table, and eating real pasta off real plates with real silverware. And then finishing the meal with a double espresso.  And getting some very obvious stares from the other patrons as we spoke English in the middle of their little town.

Anyway, in this cafe, we asked the best way into Florence from the owner, who thankfully spoke enough English that we could almost understand him when he gave us directions.  He suggested that instead of staying in expensive, busy Florence, we stop by a few places on the way and stay outside of the city and just drive in for the day.  So, we took his advice and began looking for the towns he had mentioned....good choice on our part!

We ended up (after a few turn-arounds and many many bends in the road) at a castle.  It looked exactly as you would expect a medeival (I know I spelled that one wrong) castle to look-but the surprise was that it was open, and there was a whole little town inside! Where people actually lived year-round!  Most of the stores were closed, since this is the very very slow season for tourism, but we stopped in a little store and talked for a bit to the owner.  She told us that 48 people live in the town, and that the castle walls were almost 2,000 years old, and that all of the buildings inside were at least 1,000 years old. We also had a little wine tasting in her basement, which used to be a barn, as she pantomimed to us by mooing and imitating a cow eating :) the ways you manage to communicate...

 A little tiny graveyard outside the walls of Monterregionni

 drinking local Tuscan wine in a 2,000 year old barn

 The view off the top of San Gimignano-you could see for miles

Some of the towers in San Gimignano

 

We continued on our way, and after several other turn-arounds and many more bends in the road, managed to find San Gimignano, an even bigger castle from the same time period with an incredible view. About 200 people live within the walls here, and there is everything you would ever need, all within a castle.  It blows my mind...a whole town encased in walls.
I really need to start uploading pictures, as we are taking hundreds, but it is kind of a daunting task so I think I'll procrastinate a little longer on that.  But when I do you will have such a better idea of what I'm talking about-my words are so not doing this trip justice.
Tomorrow we really are going to go to Florence, like we've been saying we were going to for the past two days.  Hopefully driving our little Ford into an Italian city won't give Dad a heart attack-I'm going to have my fingers crossed the whole time.
By the way, I learned another Italian word-trattoria.  I kept seeing it on restaurants all over, and it wasn't defined in my phrase book, so I gave in and asked our waiter tonight (who I am sure immediately made fun of me when he went back into the kitchen, but whatever.  He probably already hated Americans anyway). It is the Italian word for somewhere that is like a nice restaurant, but cheaper...good thing to know if I'm ever traveling in Italy on my own buck :)
Maybe tomorrow I will post some pictures...maybe not.  I know you're on the edge of your seat.
Buena notte!

Avant le début

Here we go. First post on my very first blog...I feel so technologically advanced.  Please excuse any and all grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors, as I've always hated going back over what I've written to ensure grammatical correctness.  Also, I have been known to overuse emoticons; please just bear with me :)
It's been suggested to me that I begin getting in the habit of posting before I embark on my journey, so that when I actually have something important or interesting to share with all of you lovely people I'll remember to do it. And not just post twice the entire time I'm gone, rendering the creation of this site pointless. Hence this post.
I'm in the process of packing, and it is by far and away the most difficult packing I've ever had to do.  Even deciding what to take to college was a walk in the park compared to fitting four and a half months' worth of belongings into two or three very small suitcases.  Not to mention, ensuring I have a plethura of copies of every document customs could possibly demand to see upon my entry into their country.  It seems every day my departure comes closer, and I cannot think of one more thing I have to sign up for, prescription to fill, piece of clothing to get cleaned, pre-departure orientation to complete, etc, and somehow something completely new crops up to which I haven't given a second of thought, and there goes my nice free day.
I guess I can't complain too much though, as I always seem to have time to watch an excessive amount of Food Network...I think I've seen every episode of Barefoot Contessa and Giada at Home ever made.  I really ought to be a gourmet chef at this point, but in all honesty am still eating mac and cheese out of the box.
I think that just about wraps up everything remotely interesting I have to share at this point- thanks for reading, and next time you hear from me I will be in Italy!